Episode #021: The Go-Giver Mindset with Bob Burg

Jeff: Let me ask you, how do you rate your own value, by what you make, or by what you give away? Let’s get into that on today’s episode of The Buyer’s Mind.

Announcer: Welcome to the Buyer’s Mind where we take a closer look deep inside your customer’s decision-making mechanism. To reverse engineer the perfect sales presentation. Now, please welcome your host Jeff Shore.

Jeff: Welcome everyone to The Buyer’s Mind where we investigate exactly what is going on in the brains of our prospects who are considering or purchasing decision. That’s what this Podcast is all about, taking a stroll through the buyer’s brain, I’m your host Jeff Shore. You can read the full bio in the show notes or you can visit jeffshore.com and we can have some fun. I like to live by the concept that we take our work seriously, but ourselves less so. Welcome, Mr. Paul Murphy our show producer. Murphy, how are you doing today?

Paul: Doing fantastic, there’s no snow in Colorado.

Jeff: Good to hear it, good to hear it. Paul, you know we get some really, really great guests on The Buyer’s Mind, and then sometimes we get just a legitimate business celebrities and I am so stoked because today we’re gonna talk to the great Bob Burg. I always feel better about life when I do, he’s just that kind of guy. But one of the key principals from his book, The Go-Giver, is that your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment. And, Murphy, you and I had talked about this, right? I shared that concept with you while we were preparing for today’s show. What is your take on the concept?

Paul: Well, the concept’s kind of universal, isn’t it? The whole idea that we’re serving others and we get something from that, don’t we? We can’t take, and take, and take, you have to be able to give, and so when you give to others, you actually receive in return.

Jeff: Yeah, I think, I’m trying to remember who said: “It’s impossible to do something nice for someone else without feeling better yourself.” So even that has its way, but I quote the late Zig Zigler, he used to say frequently “You can get what you want out of life if you just help enough other people get what they want”.

So we’re gonna be talking to Bob Burg today with the Go-Giver concepts and again, you’re gonna love it I absolutely promise you. But staying with the theme, our quote of the day comes from Winston Churchill, the man himself, and he says, “We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give”, and that’s consistent with today’s theme. You’ve probably heard that quote before, I share it now as a reminder to internalize that idea. When you look at the wisdom of the ages giving is more than a good idea, it’s a way of life. I just think of Amy Carmichael who once said, “You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving”. Or Mother Theresa who said, “It is not how much we give, but how much we love in our giving”. Or go all the way back to Proverbs 11:24, “One gives freely, yet grows all the richer. Another withholds what he should give, and only suffers want.” There’s a beautiful richness of life in giving of yourself, and that certainly holds true to the way that you take care of your customers or the way that you give to your customers.

And I just wanna challenge you, even as we’re getting into today’s Podcast, to ask yourself the question. How can you give more of yourself today? What can you do here to practice that giving mindset? And again, the greatest gift that we give is the gift of ourselves and the way that we invest in people. So we’ll get into that today. I think you’re gonna absolutely love it.

Hey, be sure to stick around because we love to give stuff away, and I’m giving stuff away right at the very end of today’s Podcast, so stick around. I’ll tell you more about that.

Our Podcast is always sponsored by our good friends at Home Street Bank, not just our show sponsor, they are my lender of choice. The last home that I purchased, we used Home Street Bank for their financing, and I have to tell you it was the smoothest transaction I’ve ever had, and I’ve purchased quite a few homes, but they’re professional, dependable, great rates, fantastic service. If you are a real estate professional listening today, you’re just not gonna find better people to work with in taking care of your clients. So whether it’s banking, or home loans, credit lines, you name it, go to homestreetbank.com to learn more. That’s homestreetbank.com.

Well, as I mentioned coming up in a few minutes our interview with Bob Burg, but before we get to that, we bring you our sales tip of the day. And today I want to encourage you to ask yourself this one question. What one problem is this customer most needing to have solved? What one problem is this customer most needing to have solved? So your customer has a number of issues, they have a number of problems, but there’s always one glaring problem that most needs to be solved. And when you think you’ve got that down, then confirm it with the customer, and you can ask them by saying, ” I wanna make sure that I’m taking good care of you, I just wanna confirm this one thing. It sounds to me that the biggest issue we’re facing is this, do I have that right?” And I’m gonna suggest to you, that this is a great way to let your customer know I understand you, I know what you were dealing with, and I’m here to serve you. But here’s the beautiful thing, if you have it wrong, and they come back and they say, “Well, actually I think the biggest issue is this”, that’s great. Because if that’s what they’re feeling, and you don’t know it, isn’t there some benefit to you? So I’m gonna encourage you just to try to determine what is the biggest issue that your customer is facing, and then present it to make sure that you’ve got it right. They might correct you, but either way, you’re gonna confirm that you’re on the same page.

Well, before we get to our interview let me tell you about an opportunity. I want to invite you to join us for the 2017 Jeff Shore Sales Leadership Summit and Expo in order for you to become a better leader for your team. To grow in ways that you never thought possible, and to take your career to an entirely new level. This is a premier industry gathering that centers around real estate leaders. Now, we’ve had people who are in other industries attend the summit, and they’ve never been disappointed. But just be aware that we’re gonna speak in a language of real estate leaders.

You’re gonna learn from the best of the best about what it takes to make you a better leader, a better manager, a better coach with more insights, more actual strategies, more ah-ha moments than ever before, entirely new material that we’ve been working very, very hard on behind the scenes. You’re gonna come away from the summit confident that you possess the tools and the knowledge, not only to succeed, but to truly change your world. I’m gonna tell you right now we are getting very, very close to a sellout. We sell out the summit every single year, we’re gonna sell it out again, and we’re actually getting very, very close. You’re gonna wanna act on this right away. Go to jeffshore.com/events.

Just a couple of quick details about the summit, it’s at the beautiful Lowe’s Coronado Resort just outside of San Diego. It is amazing resort. It starts on Thursday afternoon, goes all the way through Friday, you’re gonna wanna spend the weekend, trust me. In August in San Diego, it doesn’t get any better than that. It is an amazing experience and I want you there. Go to jeffshore.com/events to learn more about the Jeff Shore Sales Leadership Summit and Expo.

Well, if you don’t know who Bob Burg is, you need to get out more. Bob is a proficient international speaker the author of The Go-Giver series, Endless Referral, several other books. The Go-Giver is a Wall Street Journal and Business Week bestseller. It sold over 500,000 copies, and this author is now officially jealous. It’s been translated into 21 languages, I think that makes it officially legit. It really is one of those must-reads if you have never done so.
Moreover, Bob Burg is just one of the really great thinkers in business today. I am pleased to call him a friend and a mentor. Please welcome to the show, Bob Burg. Bob, how are you doing?

Bob: Oh, I’m doing great, Jeff, and you took the words right out of my mouth because I was about to say to you thank you for being my friend and mentor.

Jeff: I appreciate that so very, very much. Bob, give us a 30-second bio of your career. Just tell us a little bit about the steps that got you to where you are right now.

Bob: I began in broadcasting, failed miserably at that. Got into sales and was about to fail miserably because after three months I realized I had no idea what I was doing, so this is 35 almost 40 years ago. So I began reading books, listening to tapes, not even CD’s. This was a long time ago, and going to seminars, and really studying sales. And learning it, and applying the information, and you know there was a huge difference. But it wasn’t for a couple of years I’d say, until I really, truly understood the difference maker in selling, and that was simply coming to the realization that it was not about me, and it was not about my products or services. It was always about the other person. And until I really learned and embraced that, my potential was gonna be limited.

Jeff: Yeah, it’s so interesting because there’s this, and I think this is one of the reasons why you and I have hit it off well over these past several years, and it is that there’s this increasingly evident line in the sand when it comes to the sales world, and you can call it old school, new school, whatever you wanna call it, but I think at the core of the issue is who are you here for. And I think that there are, unfortunately, still a lot that’s being taught that’s really all about the success of the salesperson, but it’s a one-sided success. Or as long as you’re successful, I guess it doesn’t really matter what happens to what ends up being the victim on the other side of the aisle, right?

Bob: Right, and yet we know logically that in sales really the only way that you can be truly successful is as a result of making your prospective customer or client successful.

Jeff: No doubt about it. I’m happy to stand on that side of the line with you on this. You’ve written several books, I wanna touch on each of them, but mostly The Go-Giver. I don’t think this is gonna be a difficult conversation for you. Let’s start with The Go-Giver Series, an amazing success, I guess I will start by asking did you really envision that The Go-Giver would be all that it was when you first wrote it? Because, we authors, we hand a publisher a manuscript and we’re just shaking on the inside, we think “Oh man, I hope they think my baby is pretty, and I wonder if anybody will buy like one copy”, and here you are with this amazing success. Did you have any idea that The Go-Giver would pick up the way that it did?

Bob: Well, thank you. I had a feeling, Jeff, that it was gonna have a market, because I felt the timing was right for it. I was fortunate enough to work with John David Mann who’s actually a fantastic storyteller, as you know because you know me. I’m much more of a how-to person, I’m step one, step two, step three. John is a great storyteller, so I had a feeling that the basic message of the book, which is simply that shifting your focus from getting to giving. And when we say giving in this context, we simply mean constantly and consistently providing value to others, and understanding that doing so is not only a pleasant way to conduct business, it’s a very financially profitable way as well.

And I had the feeling that people were ready for that message, that they wanted that message, and the neat thing was that the early adopters were the already hugely successful salespeople who had always been doing it that way long before they heard of the book, and they shared it with others and that’s sort of how it grew.

Jeff: But that’s great because it sort of gives them that sense of somebody has cutified my philosophy the way that I feel, and then you wanna share the message and so you’ve got raving fans all over the place.

Bob: Oh, thank you. Well, I appreciate that.

Jeff: The book is written as a parable. It centers around the idea that there are five laws of what you call stratospheric success. You go in obviously much deeper detail in the book, but give us a sense of sort of the structure of The Go-Giver.

Bob: Yeah, you know, it’s this guy Joe who is sort of like the person you and I were just discussing. He kinda thinks it’s about him, the sales process is about him. He’s a good guy, he’s well-intended, he’s ambitious, but he really kind of has things backwards. With him, it’s who owes him what, and why they should buy from him, and he has a quota to meet, and you know. And so what happens is he meets one main mentor who’s name is Pindar, and who introduces him to some others, and he learns a lesson, one of the laws of stratospheric success. The laws of value compensation, influence, authenticity, and receptivity, and he learned that through that shift in focus, that success really comes to him.

Jeff: When you look at that concept, first of all, I’m gonna go on a quick little tangent here. Because as you were talking about that idea of shifting the focus, from internally, and I went through the same thing when I first started in sales. I think we all do at somepoint. It’s not unlike your career as a speaker, I would imagine, you and I haven’t talked about this, but I know for me early on it was like I wanna speak. And then eventually it got to the point where it was like I have a message, but I didn’t really feel like I was maturing as a speaker until I could look at it and say it doesn’t matter that I wanna speak, it doesn’t even matter that I have a message. The only thing that matters is the experience of every single person in every single seat, and whether or not I can touch their lives in this next hour or two hours, or however long it is. So, the principals are not contained just to sales.

Bob: Oh, right on. What you said about speaking, my goodness, I can relate to that, Jeff. And I often say to people for my first three years as a speaker, I was actually a smoother speaker, a better speaker in that regard that first three years. But it was only after I learned that it was not about me, and it was not about my being perfect, and it was not about the feis sade, it was about the audience, I probably became a lot less smooth, and I was a much more effective communicator.

Jeff: Yeah, I remember once being at the National Speakers Association Convention and it was a juxtaposition of two speakers. One who had come out who was so polished. I mean I’m pretty sure she had a consultant to work with her wardrobe and everything else and her hands were exactly in the right position, and she enunciated clearly and got you to hang on every last word. You know, I guess technically it was fine, but right after her was the founder of an organization called Operation Smile. They work in third world countries and they fix kids with deformed faces. And I have to tell you what, he’s not a quote professional speaker, but by the time he was done, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house, and it was one of the most profound presentations we’ve ever seen in our lives.

So I think so much of it comes down to who are you there for? It is true it’s speaking, it is true it’s sales. I think that this is probably good advice every single day for a salesperson to start the day by asking you who are you there for? It’ll make a huge difference in the way that you approach your day.

Bob: Well, you know I agree with you entirely. And I think in a sense that the big idea that this brings about is something that we as sales professionals, and I think we all know, but that sometimes we forget because we’re human beings, and that is a perspective buyer, Jeff, is going to buy for their reasons, and their reasons only, not for ours. No one is gonna buy from you because you have a quota to meet, they’re not gonna buy from you when I say you I mean any of us, because we need the money, or because we’re a really, really nice person who believes in what we sell. They’re only gonna buy from us, from you, from anyone because they believe they’ll be better off by doing so than by not doing so. And that’s the only reason that they should buy. And when we understand that, not just on a logical level, but on a heart level, that’s when we’re in a position to create the environment for truly serving that person.

Jeff: Okay, but here’s both the paradox and the irony. In your book, Joe in this journey learns that by doing this, and this isn’t explicit in the text, but certainly the message is there, Joe learns that his customers want him to be successful. His customers are perfectly great with him, there is a sense of mutual respect and I’m okay with you winning by the time we’re done. So it’s not just a matter of pouring yourself out there as a marter, by the time you’re done if you’re doing this right it’s a wonderful relationship.

Bob: Yeah, you know, you bring up a great point because there’s nothing about being a go-giver that says that you’re a doormat, that you’re a marter, or that you’re self-sacrificial in any way, shape, or form. It’s just as Joe, the protege learn from several of the mentors in the story, the golden rule of business, what I believe is the golden rule of sales is that all things being equal people will do business with and refer business to those people they know, like, and trust. Yes, you’re right, they want you to succeed and there’s no faster more powerful way of eliciting those feelings toward you in others than by genuinely and authentically moving from that I focus, or that me focus, to that other focus. Or as Sam one of the mentors advised Joe, making your win all about the other person’s win.

Jeff: Yeah, well I guess that’s just true of relationships in general, isn’t it? If it’s a really healthy relationship it’s not one-sided regardless of which role you are playing it’s always looking out for the best for everybody around. You talk about these five steps that you mentioned, value, compensation, influence, authenticity, and receptivity. Let’s jump back to compensation here for just a little bit because the premise from The Go-Giver is that your income is determined by how many people you serve and how well you serve them. And that’s really interesting because I think that shortcut thought is my income is determined by whatever my boss tells me my income is going to be. Right?

Bob: Well, one of the things I love about sales is that as salespeople we are really in our own business, you know we are entrepreneurs, and again, depending upon your company, obviously if it’s a company with no commission, then it’s up to you as a salesperson to decide to determine if that is the situation you wanna be involved in. But where most sales is commission-based, we only can profit by helping others, helping our customers, our clients to profit, and it’s not just that, but it’s also being able to impact the lives of many other people.

Where law number one talk the law of value, talks about providing such an amazing, fantastic customer experience. That in and of itself represents only your potential income. Your actual income is how many lives you’re able to impact, how many lives you’re able to reach with the exceptional value you provide.

Jeff: So powerful, and I love that. We only profit when we impact the lives of other people. It was interesting, I was having breakfast at a hotel in Southern California before a daylong meeting I was attending, and I was talking to the food server. I have a soft spot in my heart for food servers because that was my first career in the restaurant business, and she was just a young lady and was asking me about my career and where it had gone, and I had suggested to her, the advice comes off a little bit pithy, but I think it makes a lot of sense. I suggested to her you’re gonna get compensated in your career commences with the size of the problem you solve. So you know look, burgers need to be flipped, that’s a problem. But it’s not a big problem and a lot of people can do it, so you’re never gonna make a lot of money doing it.

But if you look at it and you say who is out there that needs me, who is out there that needs this? It’s true this is what salespeople do, they come along, there’s professionals out there saying how do I solve your problem? How do I add value into your life and then they’re compensated accordingly. It’s a beautiful thing, and it’s one of the reasons that salespeople are a different breed than everybody else, right?

Bob: Oh, exactly, and I mean let’s face it, the big ideas are the ones that either solve problems, sometimes problems that people didn’t know they even had and they wouldn’t have thought of that, and someone came along and was able to provide a solution to a problem that maybe no one thought there’d ever be a chance of providing the solution to. Or finding a way to bring people so much joy that they didn’t know that they could have. You know ,that would be something like a Walt Disney World, or you know, something like that.

So, yes, we are compensated based on how big a contribution we make to humanity. This is especially true, by the way, the more free market in economy is. Because in a truly free market-based economy, no one is forced to do business with anyone else. So the only reason someone’s gonna buy from you is because they believe that doing so will bring them closer to happiness than not doing so based on how they understand happiness.

Jeff: Let’s skip down to point number five here, receptivity. The key to effective giving is to stay open to receiving. This is much more difficult for some people than it is for others and I admit that for me this is something that just in my own character, that I’ve been trying to pay attention to. I like to think of myself as a fairly generous giver. I like to give, I really do enjoy that, but my wife has pointed out countless times that I am not the strongest when it comes to receiving. Why is that even in the book in the first place, and why is that attribute so important?

Bob: I think for the very reason that you just discussed. And that is, it is very human to have difficulty with receiving if one by their very nature, as you are, is a giver. And yet if you give, and you are not willing to allow yourself to receive, you’re stopping the flow because the way life works is giving and receiving. As human beings, we both breathe out and breathe in. It’s not one or the other. We breathe out carbon dioxide, we breathe in oxygen. We breathe out which is giving, we breathe in which is receiving. The ocean, the tide rolls out and it rolls in. We plant the seeds, but we also must harvest or there’s never gonna be any food on anyone’s table.

And so it can be very difficult with all the messages we get from the world around us. The world around us, Jeff, does not give us mixed messages about money and prosperity. They give us negative messages about money and prosperity. And we get this garbage, we hear it all the time. We read it all the time. Whether it’s with many people it’s a combination of upbringing or environment, schooling, news media, television shows, and movies where in practically any major big hit movie there are two types of people. There are the good people who are usually portrayed as being poor, but happy, right? They’re always poor, but happy, and they’re always being picked on, stepped on, stepped over, bullied by who? The rich people who are mean and nasty and have no soul. These are the messages we get from the time we’re little kids and it’s put into our head, not purposely, there’s no conspiracy to keep people poor impoverished thinking. It’s just what sells.

See here’s a headline you will probably will not see in the newspaper, Corporate CEO treats people fairly. Right? They workshop that one, did not test out, right? It doesn’t attract eyeballs. What attracts eyeballs is all the bad things that people do. So this is sort of a long way of saying that we are trained to unconsciously reject prosperity because we, again on an unconscious level think there’s something bad, negative, or evil about it. And so we’ve got to get past that. We’ve gotta understand that so long as we are focused on the giving, the giving of value to others, so long as we’re focused on the giving, we need to be able to allow ourselves to receive. And when we do, we have so much prosperity in our lives, and it’s a good, happy, fantastic life.

Jeff: Last question here, Bob. Give us some advice for the person, obviously, I’m going to be encouraging people and we’ll put it on the show notes to give a link to The Go-Giver, but for sales professionals who are listening right now and they’ve never read The Go-Giver, that is on their action item, but give them one tip that they can put in place right now while they’re waiting for the book to show up in the mail.

Bob: Oh, I’d say to ask yourself what ways that you can provide value to another person as they understand it to be of value. So, you know, when we talk about value, which is really the relative worth or desirability of something, of a thing to the end user, we need to remember that value is always in the eyes of the beholder. So when you find yourself offering something or suggesting something because you see it of being of value, catch yourself. That would be the action item, catch yourself and ask yourself how do I know that that’s what this person sees as value?

Jeff: And there you have it my friends, 20 minutes of sitting at the feet of the master. Bob, that was incredible. I appreciate it so much. I have a sense we’re gonna need to do this again because I think we sort of just got, we didn’t even get to your other books, but that was so powerful. I really appreciate you sharing your insight, your wisdom, and your encouragement to our audience. Thanks for being with us, Bob.

Bob: Oh, Jeff, thank you so much.

Jeff: All righty. Well, Hey Murphy, I told you that people were gonna love Bob Burg. I don’t think they’re gonna be disappointed, what do you think?

Paul: Not at all. I mean you mention the word knowledge bombs all the time, he was dropping a ton of them.

Jeff: Yeah he sure was, and not just knowledge bombs, but wisdom bombs.

Paul: Wisdom bombs, that’s probably a more accurate description, thank you.

Jeff: Yeah, no I just absolutely loved it. I love the idea that we only profit when we impact the lives of other people, and I think that that’s exactly true. The extent to which we impact the lives of other people is the extent to which we profit. Now, you gotta be careful about that because you have to have a broad definition of the word profit. It doesn’t always mean necessarily financial gain, but in the sales world, the greater the impact that we have on people, then the greater the financial gain as well along those lines.

I love the idea, too, that being a go-giver has nothing to do with being a doormat, or marter in this process. That we still have the opportunity, and even the responsibility, to be influential, to be persuasive, to help the customer do what is in their best interest. But we don’t have to be a doormat in order for that to happen. But then I think, and Murphy I’d be interested in your opinion on this. We talked about the idea that givers often have a tough time receiving, and his idea was this very sort of holistic view that you’re stopping the flow. There’s give and there’s receive, and as I had mentioned to Bob, I struggle with this. Did you resonate with that, Murphy, or was that just me?

Paul: No, I did. You know it takes a certain amount of humility to take a gift from somebody whether you’re rich or poor, really. You have to be able to be in that place where you say yes, I’ll take that, and I’ve had an opportunity where my kids and I have worked with the homeless actually down in San Diego, and they actually offer you something of theirs. And to not take it from them would be rude, and yet you’re like you don’t have anything. And yet you have to be humble enough to say thank you and just be grateful for the fact that somebody wants to share something of theirs with you.

Jeff: Right, yeah. That should come naturally to us given the fact that we really appreciate sharing things with other people, so why don’t we want to bless them by being good receivers? So I’m convicted on that one, I really am. I know I’ve got work to do on that. Well, it’s fantastic. Hey, before we wrap it up I wanna tell you just I had a great opportunity here just last week to speak to our local high school and give this advice to a group of graduating seniors. And the advice is this, ask yourself one question as you go out into your career. What problem do you want to solve? And you can plan your entire career, or your service, or your ministry, or whatever it is around that one question, what problem do you want to solve? And you’re going to be compensated commensurate with the size of the problem that you are solving.

Now, as I mentioned you’re gotta take a broad interpretation of the word compensation because it doesn’t have to be a result in huge financial payoffs in order to consider it successful, but the success that you achieve will be in direct proportion to the problem that you solve. And I’m hoping that if you’re a sales professional listening in today that you take that as encouragement. Because that is what you are doing, you’re going out and working with people who have problems to solve. And sometimes they are serious problems, they are grinding problems, they keep people awake at night, and they make them irritable even when they get home to be with their family, and yet here you are to step in and say hand me those problems. Please, that’s what I want you to do, I want you to hand me those problems and I’m gonna sort them out and find the right solution for you.

What problem do you solve? What problem do you solve? And when we are really, really good at taking a customer’s problem and handing them back peace in response, boy that’s a great service to mankind.

Hey, at the beginning of this show I told you that we always give something away, and today it’s the Shore Consulting Swag Bag. That’s right, it’s a bag full of books and our coffee mug, and all kinds of fun stuff. For your chance to win the Swag Bag all you have to do is go to facebook.com/jeffshorecommunity, like the page, and then find the quote graphic from today’s episode. And today’s quote if you remember, “We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give” that’s Winston Churchill. So just comment on that quote and put the hashtag buyer’s mind with your comment, and we’ll go back and we’ll pick one winner chosen at random from everybody who comments and puts the hashtag buyer’s mind, and we’ll send you a Shore Consulting Swag Bag.

Well, that’s another episode of The Buyer’s Mind. Please if you would subscribe to the Podcast we’d really appreciate that, let people know. I just had a guy come up to me, this was great just last night. After my hockey game, I play hockey in the evening, and a guy came up to me after the game and he said, “Hey I just wanna let you know, I know you don’t know me, but everybody in my office listens to your Podcast, we absolutely love it”. This is a guy who’s company sells tech security, and I had never met him before, but he said everybody in my office really loves the Podcast. That felt so good too when I hear that. So if you’re enjoying the Podcast, we really appreciate if you would let other people know.

So there you have it, another episode of The Buyer’s Mind, I hope you enjoyed it. You can find everything you need at jeffshore.com, but until next time, you know what to do go out there and change someone’s world.